This large wooden cross was erected by the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (now Preservation Virginia) in 1957 to honor the memory of settlers who died in the first years of the colony. It was dedicated by the Rev. Henry Knox Sherrill, then presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church. .

The inscription reads: “To the Glory of God and in grateful memory of those early settlers, the founders of this nation who died at Jamestowne during the first perilous years of the colony. Their bodies lie along this ridge, beyond this cross, in the earliest known burial ground of the English in America.” .